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No charges yet in slaying of US agent

FBI, US Attorney's Office tight-lipped; 4 held in case accused of illegal re-entry

Brady McCombs Arizona Daily Star

Dec 30, 2010

Customs and Border Protection

Brian Terry

Four illegal immigrants from Mexico taken into custody after a
Dec. 14 gunbattle that killed Border Patrol agent Brian Terry have
not yet been charged in connection with the slaying.

After being apprehended near where the shooting occurred
northwest of Nogales near Peck Canyon, the four men are being held
on charges of illegal re-entry after deportation, said Heather
Williams of the Federal Public Defender's Office in Tucson. Three
of the men have made their initial appearances in federal court but
the fourth has not because medically he is not well enough, she
said. Border Patrol has said the man was wounded in the
conflict.

The federal government has given Williams' office and the three
private attorneys representing the other three men very little
information about the investigation. However, the attorneys don't
expect anyone currently in custody to be charged with the shooting,
Williams said.

"We would think that because of the public news pressure, if
they had enough evidence to go to the grand jury on this, they
would have issued a press release on this already," Williams
said.

The FBI, the lead investigative agency, and the U.S. Attorney's
Office have not made any public statements about the investigation
since the day after the shooting.

If the government doesn't have solid evidence that one of the
four actually shot agent Terry, 40, of Michigan, it could be
difficult to charge them under the federal felony murder law, which
is less expansive than state murder law, Williams said. The Arizona
Daily Star is withholding the names of the four men because they
have not yet been charged in connection with the shooting.

Tucson defense attorney Leslie Bowman speculates that the
government is still trying to figure out what happened that night
before deciding whether to charge her client and the others with
more serious crimes.

"My feeling is that they are probably looking for forensic
evidence," said Bowman, who is representing one of the four men.
"Obviously, there was some kind of guns involved. They seized cell
phones. They are probably looking for things like ballistics or
fingerprints."

Very little has been made public about what happened in the Dec.
14 gunbattle northwest of Nogales, but officials have confirmed
that Terry and his fellow agents in a specially trained tactical
unit known as Bortac were targeting a "rip crew" that robbed and
assaulted drug runners and illegal immigrants.

In addition to the four taken into custody, authorities said
they were searching for a fifth suspect. But the Federal Public
Defender's Office is not aware of a fifth suspect in custody,
Williams said.

Brandon Judd, president of the agents' union, said he was as
frustrated as many others following the case that so little
information was being released publicly in the days after the
shooting. But Judd says he now understands the need to keep details
of what happened that night under wraps.

"It's a delicate prosecution and if the agency came out and made
public statements, it would makes that prosecution very difficult,"
said Judd, president of Local 2544.

The fifth suspect is still out there and federal officials in
the U.S. are working closely with their counterparts in Mexico to
track him down, Judd said.

"The more information that is out here, the harder it is to make
it happen," Judd said.

As for the four men in custody, it's anybody's guess if they'll
eventually be charged in connection with the fatal shooting of
agent Terry.

"We have been trying to figure that out and basically we've been
told that we are not going to be given any information until the
government is ready," Bowman said. "We know nothing."